Exam Day #2, Steinback, and Due Date Dream

Rarely do I put commas in the title of my blog posts unless I have had an extraordinary sort of day, which, in this case, I have. We took our sixth period "exams" today; this meant that I had to present my community service paper for Life Management Skills. Our time in this class is officially concluded, and I look forward to starting Biology next week. The presentation of the papers took about 45 minutes tops, and we had about an hour before lunch, so I sat, listening to Bach and reading The Grapes of Wrath to pass the time. It was after lunch that the most significant part of the day occured. We had another hour in sixth period, and so I was reading some more of The Grapes of Wrath; my excitement increased as I came to page 615: I was nearly there! And then, ten minutes before class ended, I did it - 619 pages of Steinback, completed. I recall setting the book down, exhaling deeply, and informing Harrison, who sits to my left, of my success.
For those who haven't read The Grapes of Wrath, it is ten times the read of Of Mice and Men, in quality and of course in length - that is my humble opinion, of course. Don't expect an oh-all-the-conflict's-resolved-now sort of ending. I won't reveal the ending to those who haven't read it, as my mother did for me (I didn't believe her at first; I made her check the book to be certain, telling her that she would have a messed-up mind if she had simply imagined this ending). So, happy reading for those who are willing to take up the challenge!
Last, I had an extremely odd dream last night. It had a stressful air about it, possibly because I recall the date in the dream being May the 3rd, or to clarify, the predicted delivery date of my soon-to-be little sister (by my mother; oh, and this is the date in real life as well). In the dream, I was bustling around my mother's house in the early morning, getting ready for school, when I looked at the calendar and noticed the date. I approached my mother, who was preparing my lunch as usual in the kitchen, and inquired about how she felt.
"I think the baby'll be late," she said wisely, "I don't feel anything now."
Not reassured, I allowed her to drop me off at school, making her promise that if she felt birthing pains, she was to call me on my cell phone, and I would leave school to drive her to the hospital (because I could apparently drive in the dream).
For some reason, Mr. Friedman was my day-long teacher (I haven't even had him yet for Seminar-in-the-Arts) - and he taught every subject, though I barely paid attention due to my anxiety. At one point, in the middle of the day, I was reprimanded for pulling out my cell phone to check to see if my mother had called yet. She had not.
Somewhere around this part of the dream, I seemed to forget what I was dreaming about, and I found myself sitting at the piano beside my mother, who pulled from beneath the bench a booklet containing a piano sonata of Beethoven; she opened it, bent the spine back a bit so that it would stay open, and placed it on the stand. The sheet music, as I recall, did not look insanely difficult, and my mother said, "Perhaps I'll be able to play this." she began to play, somehow sight-reading effortlessly with no experience on the piano. After watching her play the first page, I decided to give it a shot; I somehow forgot all of the notes and their locations on the instrument relative to where they fell on the sheet music. I struggled and fumbled, growing increasingly impatient with myself, before the dream changed back again to the school setting. It was the end of the day, and everyone headed either to the parking lot or to the bus lot; I headed in the direction of the parking lot, where I was intercepted by Elizabeth E, who said, "Are you still coming over for a sleep-over tonight?" I didn't recall making plans with her in the dream, but she insisted that we had, and so I had no choice but to follow her to where her dad sat waiting in his roofless car. My hair billowed behind me as we drove far out of town, much further than Shannon's house's location in Clemmons. "Did you guys move or something?" I asked, stressed out about the prospect of trying to find my way back into town in time if my mother called with news of her birthing pains.
"We did, actually." Mr. Eppley said. "We found this nice little place on the far side of Yadkinville."
Inhaling, I pulled out my phone one more time to see if my mother had called. She had not. However, for the rest of the dream, which I cannot quite remember, there was this overhanging air of anxiety, as I waited for my mother to call.